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Topic: undeveloped thought #655321B (Read 1435 times)

Which is interesting in and of itself, since there was a study a couple of years back which showed depressed people (as in, clinically depressed) tended to have a more accurate worldview and make more realistic assessments about things. Depression made people more precise and accurate thinkers.

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"The thoughts of all men arise from the darkness. If you are the movement of your soul, and the cause of that movement precedes you, then how could you ever call your thoughts your own? How could you be anything other than a slave to the darkness that comes before? Only the Logos allows one to mitigate that slavery. Only knowing the sources of thought and action allows us to own our thoughts and our actions, to throw off the yoke of circumstance."- R. Scott Bakker, The Darkness That Comes Before

Which is interesting in and of itself, since there was a study a couple of years back which showed depressed people (as in, clinically depressed) tended to have a more accurate worldview and make more realistic assessments about things. Depression made people more precise and accurate thinkers.

That's because the more terrible you believe the world is, the closer you are to the Truth.

But this does not negate the fact that having a group of Eeyores and Marvins pissing and moaning all day long is not going to lead anywhere spectacular, unless you're a huge fan of Emo music.

Didn't someone recently post a link to a study on the power of pessimistic thinking? Oh wait, no, that was my FBF. I need to find that. Apparently, people who think too positively fare worse in many ways than people who are more negative. I like to think that critical thinking has something to do with this, as being critical is often seen as negative, pessimistic, a "downer", but in reality exploring potential negative outcomes and remaining grounded in reality rather than sailing off into hopeful/wishful thinking can not only head off negative consequences, but also means that when you do take a risk, you take a GOOD risk.

This article was interesting because some of the most abject failures I know are the people who do incredibly stupid things because they "choose to believe it will work out". Positive thinking at its finest. These people also seem more prone to depression, possibly because they are constantly having their hopes dashed by reality.

Nothing pisses me off more than people who bring positive thinking into my workplace.

Negative - there's no fucking point trying it'll all end up shit anyway

Positive - don't worry everything will work out fine in the end

Pragmatic - aint going to be easy. X, y and z are against us but if we don't try it'll never happen and at least we got a, b and c in our favour

I stand corrected - I wasn't taking about positive thinking after all

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Ass-Kicking & Foot-Stomping Ancient Master of SHIT FUCK FUCK FUCKAwful and Bent Behemothic Results of Last Night's Painful Squat.High Altitude Haggis-Filled Sex Bucket From Beyond Time and Space.Internet Monkey Person of Filthy and Immoral Pygmy-Porn Wart ContagionOctomom Auxillary Heat Exchanger Repairmanwalking the fine line line between genius and batshit fucking crazy"And National Geographic got interested because National Geographic has the theory that the last century, discovery was basically finding things, and in this century, discovery is basically making things."-- Stewart Brand

Like most woo, positive thinking has gotten way out of hand. I like to think of myself as rationally optimistic, in a sort of risk-seeking way.

Negative: There's a 100% chance it won't work.Positive: There's a 100% chance it will work.Rational: There's a 63% chance it won't work, so it probably won't.Rational Optimist: There's a 37% chance it will work, and we should take that risk because of the possible benefits.

"Get offa me, you freaks! This is not North Korea. No. This is America, and I expect to be PAID for that sort of nonsense. In advance. No credit...Cash on the barrelhead or GTFO. I swear to God, there's nothing more annoying than commie perverts who don't understand the intrinsic value of the free market system."

Like most woo, positive thinking has gotten way out of hand. I like to think of myself as rationally optimistic, in a sort of risk-seeking way.

Negative: There's a 100% chance it won't work.Positive: There's a 100% chance it will work.Rational: There's a 63% chance it won't work, so it probably won't.Rational Optimist: There's a 37% chance it will work, and we should take that risk because of the possible benefits.

"Get offa me, you freaks! This is not North Korea. No. This is America, and I expect to be PAID for that sort of nonsense. In advance. No credit...Cash on the barrelhead or GTFO. I swear to God, there's nothing more annoying than commie perverts who don't understand the intrinsic value of the free market system."

The way I look at it is, if you know your risks, you can take steps to alleviate them. It is also beneficial to be aware of your realistic worst case scenario.

Example: I need a new porch. Cost for building a new porch is about $8k. I don't have $8k. I could put it all on a credit card, but that is a poor investment. I could do a rough cost/benefit analysis and use some of my financial aid money to replace the floorboards, which will not resolve the problem of needing a full rebuild, but will alleviate my liability risk at a relatively minimal cost. Drawback: I also need new tires. Porch floorboards and new tires are about the same cost. Liability from someone falling through the porch is probably a lower risk than a freeway blowout or an accident in the rain with poor tread.

"Get offa me, you freaks! This is not North Korea. No. This is America, and I expect to be PAID for that sort of nonsense. In advance. No credit...Cash on the barrelhead or GTFO. I swear to God, there's nothing more annoying than commie perverts who don't understand the intrinsic value of the free market system."

But that actually applies to just about anything, if you change the words around a little.

Joe wants to try doing stand up comedy.

He's inexperienced, and is reasonably sure he'll bomb, at least the first time out.

Joe psychs himself up to go out and make it happen, no matter what the audience does. Plans to do something exciting immediately afterward, to get rid of that awful feeling, so that he'll have the guts to try again.

That's HOW you get things to turn out for the best, IMO. And if I didn't have financial aid or credit cards, I would take the ghetto road (I CAN SAY THAT BECAUSE I AM BLACK) and nail a piece of plywood over my rotting floorboards, and go to Double J Tire Center. Which I might do anyway.

I know a lot of diehard positive-thinkers who would charge up their credit card to pay for the porch and drop $600 on new tires, believing that it will just turn out OK, or, conversely, would ignore both problems for the same reason. Being aware of shit what might go wrong is the first step in fixing it, and IMO those "secret"-believing mofuckers have a tendency to ignore the negative until it's a problem too big to ignore.

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“I’m guessing it was January 2007, a meeting in Bethesda, we got a bag of bees and just started smashing them on the desk,” Charles Wick said. “It was very complicated.”

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